मर्द को दर्द नहीं होता – Be a Man! is Agenda 1’s latest video. Information and our understanding on forms of abuse, including systematic statistics on sexual violence against boys, are woefully lacking. This video features the voices of three young men from Delhi, on a shared experience of violence, mostly suffered in silence.
Last week in Vijay Nagar in Delhi, two boys both minors aged 16 and 17 years, sodomized a 12 year old boy for refusing to buy them a bidi (cigarette). Both the accused have been arrested.
One of the few recent pan India surveys on child abuse, “Study on Child Abuse India 2007”, a Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) study showed that every second child in the country is facing one or more forms of sexual abuse. The survey also found that the vast majority of victims (72 percent) said that they did not report the matter to anyone and only 3 percent of them or their families told the police. In most cases the child knew the perpetrator. More than 50% of the children who admitted to being physically abused were boys. Limited data show that, in some countries, boys are even less likely than girls to seek help. And, like girls, most boys remain silent about their experience of violence, regardless of the type, because they do not view it as a problem.
Sources: “Study on Child Abuse India 2007”, a Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD); “United Nations Children’s Fund, Hidden in Plain Sight: A statistical analysis of violence against children“, UNICEF, New York, 2014; “2 teenagers held for sodomising minor boy”, The Asian Age, 8th January 2015.
Video by Agenda 1, which is a pilot research and media project to understand the root causes and drivers that normalize issues of abuse and violence against children and adolescents.
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Monistaf
At a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is in itself a revolutionary act!! Thank you for writing about this often ignored, misunderstood, never acknowledged issue about victimization of boys that sadly exists but no one is willing to talk about.
anku
Society knows of boys molestation and physical abuse. But cannot understand why we feel only a girl child should be protected and the boy should be left to fend for themselves. They also need caring and attentiveness from us.
When this is not done at the right time, not knowing what to do and the fear of heckling and chiding makes them hide it inside themselves. Somewhere at some point of time this manifests into a negative reaction and result is – they indulge in unlawful acts to vent out the humiliation they had once suffered.
This is when the society wakens up and howl and scream at the devil he is now. Well this could be avoided at the niche itself.